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Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.

With influences on his work ranging from musical orishas such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra to the Cuban Revolution, Malcolm X and world revolutionary movements, Baraka is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became, though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetics. The movement and his published and performance work, such as the signature study on African-American music, Blues People (1963) and the play Dutchman (1963) practically seeded “the cultural corollary to black nationalism” of that revolutionary American milieu.

Other titles range from Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1979), to The Music (1987), a fascinating collection of poems and monographs on Jazz and Blues authored by Baraka and his wife and poet Amina, and his boldly sortied essays, The Essence of Reparations (2003).

He has been the subject of numerous documentary films including Mario Van Peeble's Poetic License for The Sundance Channel and St. Clair Bourne's In Motion: Amiri Baraka. He has also appeared in dozens of films including, most recently, M.K. Asante, Jr's award-winning documentary The Black Candle.

The Essence of Reparations is Baraka’s first published collection of essays in book form radically exploring what is sure to become a twenty-first century watershed movement of Black peoples to the interrelated issues of racism, national oppression, colonialism, neo-colonialism, self-determination and national and human liberation, which he has long been addressing creatively and critically. It has been said that Amiri Baraka is committed to social justice like no other American writer. He has taught at Yale, Columbia, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems is Baraka’s first collection of poems published in the Caribbean and includes the title poem that has headlined him in the media in ways rare to poets and authors. The recital of the poem “that mattered” engaged the poet warrior in a battle royal with the very governor of New Jersey and with a legion of detractors demanding his resignation as the state’s Poet Laureate because of Somebody Blew Up America’s provocatively poetic inquiry (in a few lines of the poem) about who knew beforehand about the New York City World Trade Center bombings in 2001.

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Interview

A Conversation with Amiri Baraka

Read "A Conversation with Amiri Baraka" reviewed by Lazaro Vega


From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in November 1999. All About Jazz: I'm just really happy to see that in the last year or so you've become a much more public figure outside of academia through the recording with Hugh Ragin, Afternoon in Harlem on Justin-time, that When Sun Ra Gets Blue, and the recording with Malachi Thompson, (Free-bop Now, Delmark), as well as the concert this past summer with Sonic Youth ...

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Album Review

Roswell Rudd / Archie Shepp: Live in New York

Read "Live in New York" reviewed by John Stevenson


The year was 1994. The venue: the Eilat Red Sea Jazz Festival. Hundreds of sweltering Jazz aficionados waited in a huge converted cargo shed to witness reedman Archie Shepp and his quartet--a marquee coup for the Israeli festival. When Shepp swaggered onto the stage, the more discerning members of the audience (including this reviewer) could scarcely conceal their disappointment. Here was the 1960s hero of radical Jazz conservatively bedecked in two--piece gray suit and tie. He might as well have ...

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Festival

Vision Festival 19: Honoring Amiri Baraka The Legacy Thru Panels & Poetry

Vision Festival 19: Honoring Amiri Baraka The Legacy Thru Panels & Poetry

Source: Chris Rich

Since the first Vision Festival, in 1996, Amiri Baraka has been an important presence at Vision. But way before the Vision Festival he was a champion of the music, with his seminal books on Jazz, ‘Blues People’ and ‘Black Music’. For many of the other artists and audiences who have participated each year, Baraka has been an inspiration. For the last five years Baraka helped organize the panel discussions that deepened the context and impact for the art that is ...

Event

The TD James Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival celebrates Newark author Amiri Baraka’s “Blues People” at 50

The TD James Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival celebrates Newark author Amiri Baraka’s “Blues People” at 50

Source: Christine Saunders

Past and present journeys of all kinds – spiritual, professional, musical and cultural—intersected at the Newark Museum, where poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was honored and musician Craig Harris was featured during NJPAC’s TD James Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival. The celebrated Newark author was there in recognition of his seminal exploration of African-American music and culture, Blues People: Negro Music in White America, published 50 years ago under his birth name, (Everett) LeRoi Jones. Although the vast influence of ...

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Festival

Vision Festival 16: A Focus On The Panel Discussions

Vision Festival 16: A Focus On The Panel Discussions

Source: Chris Rich

Vision Festival 16 begins, as it generally does, with some discussion. These events tend to get shorter shrift in what passes for coverage but they speak to conditions well. The short shrift problem in some form or another is endemic and has been since jazz became the runt of the music industry without even the pious cloak of cultural sanctimony and fat budgets worn by classical. It is okay for classical to be an utter stiff in every way as ...

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Performance / Tour

Amiri Baraka Added to Highlights in Jazz Presents Thelonious Monk 90th Birthday Celebration Thursday, April 12th at Tribeca Performing Arts Center

Amiri Baraka Added to Highlights in Jazz Presents Thelonious Monk 90th Birthday Celebration Thursday, April 12th at Tribeca Performing Arts Center

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

Jack Kleinsinger and Highlights In Jazz are very pleased to announce that acclaimed poet and playwrite Amiri Baraka has just been added to the program reading very short poems from his new book The Book of Monk (Razor) & one poem from his book Funk Lore ((Littoral).

Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist ...

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Performance / Tour

Amiri Baraka & Amina Baraka at the Bowery Poetry Club Sat Dec 18 8pm

Amiri Baraka & Amina Baraka at the Bowery Poetry Club Sat Dec 18 8pm

Source: All About Jazz

December 14, 2004 To: Listings/Critics/Features From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka and Blue Ark will perform at the Bowery Poetry Club Amiri Baraka, the father of Contemporary African American Literatureand the greatest performing poet of our time comes home to the Bowery! Sat Dec 18 8pm $12/$8 students (at door only) Tix at www.virtuous.com BLUE ARK: THE WORD SHIP featuring AMINA & AMIRI BARAKA w/ Rahman Herbie Morgan, Tenor; Dwight West, Vocal, Wilber Morris, Bass; DD Jackson, piano; ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Live in New York

Universal Music Group
2001

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A Black Mass

Black Forum
1999

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